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Recent Boston Globe Article

Pulse of Longwood takes you inside one of the nation’s largest hubs of hospitals and biomedical research.

Kaylen Gaston and Mark Bell had no idea what was in store when they boarded a plane for the first time in their lives, rushing their 2-month-old baby from Texas to Boston for brain surgery. Through a bumpy medical odyssey and a startling cold snap, they had one thing to rely on — a free place to sleep in a spacious home in Beacon Hill.

Gaston and Bell are among a growing number of out-of-town families who, struggling to pay for expensive hospital care, are staying in strangers’ guest rooms during their visits.

The couple, a 23-year-old bank teller and a 24-year-old machinist, landed in town this month with their baby girl, Lynkin. They had plenty to worry about: Their baby was suffering from encephalocele, a rare neural tube defect that caused her brain to protrude in a sac outside her skull. Texas doctors had warned them that surgery might lead to fatal strokes, her father said. But after a second opinion, they decided to go through with the operation at Boston Children’s Hospital.